Laurence Olivier's film of Shakespeare's Henry V (1599) is Britain's greatest wartime epic. It is also a celebration of the possibilities of cinema, shot in Technicolor with a score by composer William Walton and a visual design inspired by illuminated manuscripts and Renaissance paintings. Released several months after the Normandy landings, the film's patriotic purpose was clear, but Olivier remains attentive to the nuances of Shakespeare's meditation on leadership. Like his protagonist, Olivier understands the power of rhetorical prowess, drawing together all the resources of his art - vocal register, physical gesture, and the movement of actors and camera - in the climactic sequence.